


Safe as Houses

by ant5b



Series: Crying for the Moon [2]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, Family Feels, Post-Finale, finale speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 10:59:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15684078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ant5b/pseuds/ant5b
Summary: Scrooge used to split his life into Before and After.





	Safe as Houses

Scrooge used to split his life into Before and After. 

For all the decades he’s lived, all the adventures and failures and wealth gained, there’s nothing that can compare to this one singular event.

There was  _ Before  _ the Spear of Selene, and then there was  _ After. _

Remembering the Before is almost as painful as enduring the After. Every one of his niece and nephew’s smiles is undeserved, every encouraging word and challenge he presents Della sets her on the path to her own destruction. 

The After is a decade’s worth of gray and monotony, where the greatest challenge he faces is finding the strength to get out of bed in the morning. 

But then the great-nephews he never met are in his house and they look and sound and act like their mother and their uncle, and suddenly nothing is the same. 

Atlantis happens, Neverrest happens, and it’s still the After, technically is it, but his life couldn’t be more different. He wakes up to noise and laughter in the halls, dart guns on the end tables and family road trip shirts in his closet. 

It’s a different sort of After. An after After, where he starts to think that maybe he can do this family thing right for once. 

He buys so much into this lie that he’s actually surprised when it all blows up in his face. 

It’s an old familiar bitterness that takes root in his gut, lingering in the back of his throat like bile. It’s always been too easy to spit venom at his family, especially as their recriminations echo everything he has ever thought about himself. 

It’s been years, he should  _ know  _ better, but he lays his heart bare and hopes for acceptance and understanding. He hopes they’ll  _ stay. _

He gets accusations and blame instead. 

And Scrooge yells back, grief and guilt and a terrible hope giving way to righteous fury because how  _ dare  _ they?

None of them had chased her around the mansion when at five years old she’d managed to get ahold of the Deux ex Scaliber.  _ They  _ hadn’t held Donald and Della in the backseat of the limo when they became too overwhelmed by the sight of their parents’ caskets. They’ve never heard the clear chime of her laughter that his life seemed so dull without. They’ve never seen her mischievous smile or been at the mercy of her extraordinary wit. 

And a part of him that isn’t overcome with a decade’s worth of grief and unspent rage knows that’s the _ whole point. _ They  _ don’t  _ know, because how could they? They’ll never see their mother outside of wrinkled photographs _ — _ he’s seen to that. 

But fighting with family is what Scrooge McDuck does best, and once he’s started he finds it impossible to stop. 

It’s best to be alone, he thinks as he spurns Webby and decimates any progress they’ve made. There’ll be no one for him to hurt (or to hurt him) if there’s no one in the first place. Why go through the trouble of having a family when all they’ve done is blame and abandon him? 

He forces everyone out and tells himself it’s what he wants. 

 

He’s allowed a week of moping and general patheticness before the world comes to an end. 

Naturally. 

After everything that’s happened, Magica de Spell returning from the netherworld to wreak her unholy wrath upon the world doesn’t have quite the  _ kick  _ it normally would. After the disaster his life has become, it almost seems appropriate that his oldest enemy unleash a murderous shadow army on the city. 

But his family comes  _ back _ . They come back to save him, though he doesn’t deserve it and deserves  _ them  _ even less. 

They all survive, surprisingly. They win. 

It’s not often that victory feels hollow. 

 

Scrooge sits on the stairs in the burnt out husk of his home. 

The sun is setting in the distance, setting the sky ablaze with burnished gold. It accentuates the shadows in the rubble, the collapsed tower and crumbling walls. The grass has been reduced to scorched earth, and the sickly stench of dark magic lingers in the air. 

He’d wanted to get away. From the ruin of his Money Bin, from the celebration at the docks, his family bruised and battered but smiling in spite of it all. He hotwired an abandoned car and drove up up to the still-smoking remains of the mansion. 

He didn’t really know where else to go. 

His Number One Dime gleams dully in his hands, the embodiment of his father’s love, his driving force for over a century, what Magica was willing to torture her own flesh and blood in order to obtain. 

It was funny, in its own way. That something so small could be of such significance, to so many. 

Part of Scrooge wants to piff the wretched thing across the yard, let it languish in the bushes. Let the next revenge-seaking numpty try and find it. 

But Scrooge doesn’t move to throw it. He doesn’t do much of anything. 

He hasn’t felt this in some time. The numbness. Like someone’s taken an ice cream scoop to his insides and left him hollow. It reminds him of the minutes following Della’s final, frantic distress call, when her voice was cut off by harsh and unforgiving hissing static. Like he isn’t sure what’s real.

The glistening sunset blurs before Scrooge’s eyes, and for a brief moment he sees a cold, dark display screen, and static fills his head, louder even than his pounding heart. 

An out-of-place sound, a _ thud, _ distracts him. 

In the wake of the apocalypse, Killmotor Hill has been silent as death. Wind sweeps through what remains of his home in a ghostly fashion, but no birds sing and no other living soul has dared approach the source of the end of the world, home of the richest duck in the world or no. No one but Scrooge should be here. 

But another thud follows the first, this one coupled with sputtered anger and a soft voice asking, “Are you okay, Uncle Donald?”

Terror lances through Scrooge, startling in its suddenness. And though it leaves him shamefaced, he wants to flee. He doesn’t know if he can bear to see them, after what he’s done. 

But they hardly give him a choice. 

Before Scrooge knows what’s happening, Donald is plopping down on the step to his left while Webby sits down with slightly more grace, but equally exhausted, to his right. 

“Hey, old man,” Donald says, like Scrooge isn’t the reason his sister’s dead. Like he isn’t the reason his boys almost joined her. 

“Hey, Uncle Scrooge,” Webby says blithely. She’s smiling, tired but bright. 

_ This is a family matter! You are  _ not  _ family! _

“I-” Scrooge says. He drops his Number One Dime on the step below.

Apologies have never come easily to Scrooge, but he nearly has to grind his teeth to keep from blurting one out to Webby. In the last day alone he thinks he must’ve apologized at least half a dozen times. None of them feel like nearly enough to make up for the tears and betrayal back on the  _ Sunchaser.  _

But they aren’t even looking at him. They’re sitting quietly, comfortably beside him in the wreckage of their home. Donald’s shoulder is a hair’s breadth from his own as he leans back with his eyes closed, soaking up the fast fading sunlight. 

“I…” Scrooge tries again, when neither seem particularly eager to speak. He’s half-convinced himself he’s imagined them anyway. “The-the boys?” he asks, sounding about as awkward as he feels. 

“Probably asleep by now.” Donald rubbed his forehead with a weary laugh. “Gloria’s letting us crash at her place.”

“Gloria?” Scrooge repeats. 

“Mrs. Cabrera,” Webby says. She was typing away at her phone, but she looks up to answer. “Lena’s there too.”

Scrooge stiffens, guilt churning in his gut because that’s right, there’s another child who’s been forced to pay for his mistakes. Possessed by evil incarnate, he couldn’t imagine how the girl could still be standing, much less help them defeat her tormentor. 

“Is she alright, Webbigail?” he asks. “ Your friend— Lena, is she alright?”

Webby gently clutches his arm, patting his hand like  _ he’s  _ the one who needs to be comforted. “She’s going to be okay! Dr. Gearloose offered to check on her; he said ‘I’ve got six PhDs, I think I’m qualified to administer first aid,’” Webby’s mimicry of Gyro is surprisingly spot-on, hand gestures and all, “but Mrs. Cabrera found a free clinic instead.”

“Probably for the best,” Scrooge mutters. 

“I’d still be with Lena, but Mrs. Cabrera said she needs a lost of rest, and probably won’t wake up for a while,” Webby says. “And Huey told me it’s creepy to watch people while they sleep.”

“We’re all crammed in their house until I can fix the houseboat again,” Donald says with an amused smile, “sharing one bathroom, sleeping on the couch, no unnecessary spending on a hotel room. You’ll love it.”

“Mostly because all the hotels closed when the shadow monsters started showing up,” Webby adds. 

“Donald,” Scrooge starts, but realizes he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. His head is spinning at their mere presence, the ease with which they’re speaking to him. He hasn’t had a genuine conversation with his nephew in almost a decade. Webby should  _ hate  _ him. Why are they _ here? _

“The boys’ll come around soon, Scrooge,” Donald says, leaning back so that their shoulders touch. “Emotionally, I mean. This place is a literal deathtrap right now —we can come back when half of the mansion isn’t still smoking.”

“I— _ come back?” _ Scrooge has apparently lost the faculties to string two words together without repeating what someone else has said. 

Donald rolls his eyes, like  _ Scrooge  _ is the one who’s making no sense. “You’re not getting rid of us that easy.”

“Yeah,” Webby says. There’s a stubborn set to her expression, her eyes daring him to contradict them. 

“But...the boys,” Scrooge says. They might’ve worked together against Magica, but the gulf between defeating evil and living with him again was ponderous and wide. 

“They wanted to come!” Webby assures him quickly. “But they fell asleep almost as soon as we got to Mrs. Cabrera’s.”

Scrooge’s looks at her in confusion. “Then how are  _ you  _ still awake?”

Donald’s pinches his brow exasperatedly. “She snagged some of Gyro’s coffee.”

Realization dawns for Scrooge with horrifying clarity. “Ah. I see.”

“Yeah, we’ll be carrying her back at this rate,” Donald says with an tired laugh. He stretches a little, but makes no move to get up. “But I think we can sit here a bit longer.”

The sun is just above the horizon now, painting the sky in shades of crimson. Donald pulls out his phone. 

“Do you wanna see pictures of the boys when they were little?” he asks. He shakes his phone enticingly. “Prime blackmail material right here.”

Webby makes an appreciative “Oooh” from Scrooge’s side, and wraps her arms around Scrooge’s, pillowing her cheek on his arm. 

After the numbness of the last few days, the emptiness eating at him from the inside out, it’s almost too much. He’d almost think he was imagining it all, if it weren’t for the kernel of warmth beneath his breastbone. A warmth he’s only ever associated with Della’s smile, the boys’ laughter, Webby’s hugs. Scrooge has never been able to imagine that. 

Scrooge’s eyes sting, and he doesn’t think he can speak. He manages a nod.  

His nephew scoots closer so all three of them can see the phone’s screen. Scrooge manages to gently free his arm from his great-niece’s grip so he can wrap it around her shoulders, and allow her to burrow against his side. 

Scrooge clears his throat. “Have you got any photos of their hatch day?” He tries to make the request sound casual, but by the smirk Donald throws his way he knows he’s failed. 

“I’ve got photos of just about everything,” Donald says, laughing a little. “At least until they wised up to what a camera was and tried to get me to stop. What do you wanna see?”

Scrooge’s brings Webby just a little bit closer. 

“Everything,” he says. 

 


End file.
